Conspiracy Theories, Skepticism, and Critical Thinking

  In Gary Allen’s “None Dare Call It Conspiracy” he explains that if you ask the average person what Communism is, they’ll give some answer about Russia. If they’re an academic, they’ll probably talk about the differences between Socialism, Marxism, and Communism. None of those, according to him, are correct, because Communism is something else. His view, and that of the John Birch Society as well as the current presidential administration is that COMMUNISM (Allen does all caps for this) is just a word for whatever they don’t like. Usually this is anything that is progressive or liberal. Increase taxes on the ultra-wealthy an extra 1%? COMMUNISM! Make law enforcement accountable for their actions? COMMUNISM! Etc. It’s all very stupid because the word has no meaning. What I didn’t know when I covered Gary Allen’s book was that he blatantly stole this framing from Webster, “ In the same way the word ‘Communism’ has a double meaning.” She goes on to explain that the average person...

  It is a good thing that this book is wrapping up because Webster is all over the place now. Last week I hypothesized that Webster was beginning to end this book when someone handed her an English copy of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion which had just been published in England. She had to work extra hard to write that forgery into her book while at the same time discrediting it because she’s so racist against Germans that it actually overrides her anti-Semitism. Perhaps 1918 was just a different time. An important thing to remember about this time is that racism isn’t just about skin color. That aspect of racism still exists but there is also the racism against ethnic groups as well. When Webster attacks Germans, it’s racist—it’s just not what we are used to. Webster hates anyone that isn’t Anglo, Napoleanic French, or Bakunin specifically. Her book has to do the conspiracy theory move of making us afraid of the imminent future, so she has to look at the most immediate past....

Last week we glossed over the long period where Webster compared selections of the Protocols to selections of whatever she could use to show that the world revolution was being controlled by a single entity. She failed in this, but the point was to never create a case—this far in the book, you are buying her story. Her intended audience is not going to fact check her assertions about the other books. She’s been handed a gift in the form of an English translation of the Protocols which not only justifies her anti-Semitism but also her conspiracy. Because the Protocols are too good of evidence she questions their authenticity. This is a good move, a surprising one for her, but I would give her credit if I didn’t suspect that it was disingenuous. A little background for any new readers. This book was published in 1921. The first English version of the Protocols was published in Britian in 1920. While she’s writing this book, the Protocols are going to hit the shops. It had been widely c...

 After learning some Webster’s absolutely deniable opinions, with two basic facts thrown in, she wants us to begin focusing on who the real Illuminati is, “ who are the modern Illuminati, the authors of the plot?” Can you guess? I’ll give you two attempts only because the first one is going to be “isn’t the modern Illuminati the modern Illuminati? No. To find who the modern Illuminati are, we need only look at the Russian revolution. The revolution that three posts ago she said wasn’t worth covering. She characterizes the Russian revolution as having no motive other than a campaign of ceaseless destruction. This motiveless violent revolution has “ led many people to believe in the theory of a Jewish conspiracy to destroy Christianity,” and that, “ to the unprejudiced observer Bolshevism in Russia may well appear to be a wholly Jewish movement.” Anti-Semitism was a rife in England during the interwar period. There may have very well been people who blamed the Russian Revolution ...

We’re hitting the final stretch of this book, and I realize with foreboding that I am going to have to find another one to keep going. I can say, without hyperbole, that I have probably read more of these conspiracy books than any other person. Not that I’ve read more conspiracy books, but that I’ve read more of the books. I’m actually reading them page by page and I doubt that anyone else has really done that. So, self-aggrandizement aside, even Webster knows that it’s time to wrap this thing up in a bow. She asks us to ponder the question that if the last 140 years of world history are not being directed by a single power then, “ how are we to account for the following undeniable facts?” Now, the last time she attempted to go line by line she absolutely flubbed it. To her advantage she hasn’t given us a specific number of undeniable facts so she’s learned from her earlier attempt. Her first is that the “ grievances of the people throughout this period have varied according to t...

  Works like this survive on vibes, and one of the vibes that they have to exploit is fear. Most of that fear is about changing the orthodoxy that the reader regards as “the default.” People hate change, especially Americans. An American will brag about surviving suffering rather than every question why they suffered in the first place. When the Communist/Socialists takeover (in Webster’s view these ideologies are the same), one of the cultural institutions that they target are the religious ones. From the perspective of the revolutionaries the reason that this is a necessary step is because religious institutions are part of the problem. The French revolution targeted the Catholic church because the Catholic church, at the time, was part of the oppression of the French peasantry. They not only blessed the Aristocracy they were inextricable from it. The Russian Orthodox church was the same. The Tsarist government was endorsed by the church and benefitted from it. What Webster lik...